The story covers twelve years of Mason’s life (from his first year of high school to his first day of college) and is made up of small episodes showing growing up and relationships with the parents of a child, a teenager, a young man.
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It is a rare case where criticism and the quality of a film are so far apart.
Not only does ‘Adolescence’ offer nothing new, it is also utterly empty in its content.
The film’s main plus, according to those who praise it, is its truthfulness. Maybe this is true, of course, but only on the most superficial level. The adolescence” teaches you nothing, real life according to Linklater is a few years (12 in our case), during which literally nothing happens. Void. There is no story, no memorable characters, just ordinary moments from supposedly real life. Of course, there are films in which the action is reduced to a minimum, but in such films, the main thing is the idea, the attempt to convey something to the viewer. What was Linklater trying to tell us? In general, nothing of value – neither in content nor in the visual expression of the author’s thought. The high estimate of the film is justified by the fact that people have not seen a real art-house, but after seeing ‘adolescence’, take it for something great. Linklater skillfully puffed up the dust, including his stubbornness in choosing the straightforward and devoid of creative intent decision to shoot the picture for 12 years.
Every film has two goals — to make the viewer think or simply to entertain. ‘Adolescence’ is Linklater’s spit in both camps, as the film is hollow in both content and form.
It is hard to call this film a drama. Rather, it is a collection of meaningless scenes designed to awaken a sense of déjà vu in the viewer, like all this has happened to me! But the thing is that a movie has to take the viewer into its own reality, to offer something more than aimless copying of life. You might as well take a video camera and film your family for 12 years – but it won’t be called a movie as such, because it won’t carry any meaning or value to the viewer. The idea of showing a child growing up is interesting, but unfortunately for Linklater in 3 hours the idea remains an idea and is not transformed into a complete story. The plot, the development of the characters – Linklater didn’t take care of that.
Mason, the main character, of the film is nothing remarkable. The viewer is simply difficult to compare himself with him, to understand him. We do not fully understand his character, his goals, desires, aspirations. By the middle of the film he begins to take photographs, and that’s it, no development.
The main minus of ‘Adolescence’ is that Linklater does not even try to dramatize the scenes, to give them artistic expression, as a result, we simply watch some kind of reality show.
Everyone can show real life, but not everyone can get to the bottom of things, get to their essence. The Adolescence is too superficial, and that is why I cannot call it a great film.
Yes, the film has received rave reviews from critics, but after reading several reviews and reviews, I came to the conclusion that essentially not a single positive review had a single argument attached to it. It’s just that this movie has been made for 12 years and it’s bound to be a ‘masterpiece’ – by this fact Linklater has sort of covered up his film’s lack of any artistic merit at all.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (64.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles
English SDH.
